Skulls of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus carinatus Owen in the collections of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research

Abstract

Description of the skull of Massospondylus (Prosauropoda, Anchisauridae) is largely unnecessary since excellent descriptions now exist of Plateosaurus (Galton 1984, 1985a) which, though larger and of slightly different proportions, is anatomically almost identical. This paper presents comprehensive illustrations of the Massospondylus skulls in the Bernard Price Institute collections and discusses only those aspects of this material in which Massospondylus differs from Plateosaurus, or which further add to our knowledge of the prosauropod skull. It is shown that Attridge et al. ( 1985) give spurious reasons for considering the recently discovered Massospondylus skull from Arizona to differ from the southern African taxon, and that the suggestion of Crompton and Attridge ( 1986) that this animal may have had a horny beak on the tip of the lower jaw is unnecessary and improbable.